One of the most important parts of the software development process is the process of software testing. Testing refers to the process of repetitively executing portions of a computer program to ensure that the program is functioning correctly and to identify errors within the executing program code. Because the testing process can be very repetitive, and therefore stressful on humans, automated testing programs have been developed that simulate human user input to a computer program. In particular, scripts can be generated for use with an automated testing program that simulate user input to the program to be tested in a particular order. For instance, a script may contain instructions for entering keystrokes, mouse movement and selection, and other types of user input commands. In order to execute instructions contained in such a script for dynamically navigating through the bitmapped images generated by the program being tested, the automated testing program must receive coordinates that identify where certain characters or text are located within the bitmapped screen display. Character coordinates enable the automated testing program to simulate user input and locate specific graphics or text within a bitmapped image so that script instructions may be executed upon elements shown in the bitmapped image, such as menus, user interface elements, and the like.
Traditionally, automated testing programs, optical character recognition (“OCR”) programs, and other similar programs do not provide the coordinates of where characters or text are located within bitmap images. In the case of automated testing programs, the user must specify the coordinates or location of the characters. This enables the automated testing program to locate the specified characters or text within the bitmapped image generated by the software being tested. However, requiring user input of the desired coordinates greatly hinders the software testing process because the user performing the testing may not know the coordinates of the text or characters being sought. In the alternative, routines that submit every possible coordinate to the automated testing program with hopes of finding the desired text are unreliable and time consuming. This may be extremely inconvenient when it is necessary to test the software components of any computer system, especially those located across the country or even the world.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.